Tuesday, January 24, 2006

NOLA Fraud

JACKSON, Miss. - The FBI has uncovered fraud by public officials in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and has created a task force to investigate corruption as federal money pours into the Gulf Coast region, Mississippi's top agent said Monday.

Uncle Sam is sending about $10 billion to Louisiana for "rebuilding."

"There's gold in them thar' hills!"

"We are seeing public officials facilitating some of the fraud," John G. Raucci, agent in charge in Mississippi, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's not widespread, I will say that, but we have seen it and we have begun addressing it."

Raucci would not give details.

Can you say...kickbacks for help in landing federal contracts?

$2,000 hammers?

Ghost employees?!

Sheila Thorne, an FBI agent in Louisiana, said the bureau has set up task forces in each of that state's three districts to deal with hurricane-related fraud. "As allegations come in, they will be investigated," Thorne said in a separate interview.

Thorne said agents are looking at all levels of fraud in Louisiana, including public corruption.

Federal money has been pumped at an unprecedented rate into the gulf states since Katrina struck on Aug. 29, and Louisiana and Mississippi are set to receive billions in aid.

"So if a person was predisposed ... to commit an act of public corruption, this will be the time when he or she can dig their hand into the public trough," Raucci said.

Imagine that.

He's suggesting...that there are people...working in our government...who are PREDISPOSED...to corruption.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - The White House was told in the hours before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans that the city would probably soon be inundated with floodwater, forcing the long-term relocation of hundreds of thousands of people, documents to be released Tuesday by Senate investigators show.

"But, but -- "

A Homeland Security Department report submitted to the White House at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, hours before the storm hit, said, "Any storm rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching."

Oops.

The internal department documents, which were forwarded to the White House, contradict statements by President Bush and the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, that no one expected the storm protection system in New Orleans to be breached.

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," Mr. Bush said in a television interview on Sept. 1. "Now we're having to deal with it, and will."

A White House spokesman, asked about the seeming contradiction between Mr. Bush's statement on Sept. 1 and the warning as the storm approached, said the president meant to say that once the storm passed and it initially looked as if New Orleans had gotten through the hurricane without catastrophic damage, no one anticipated at that point that the levees would be breached.

Rrriiiggghhhttt.

The Senate investigators have also found evidence that at least some federal and state officials were aware last summer that the hurricane evacuation planning in the New Orleans area was incomplete.

"We're at less than 10 percent done with this trans planning when you consider the buses and the people," said a summary of a July briefing held with local, state and federal officials regarding a possible hurricane in Louisiana and referring to transportation planning.

"If you think soup lines in the Depression were long, wait til you see the lines at these collection points," the summary said, referring to buses that were supposed to help pick up people to evacuate New Orleans.

This story sounds like...?

Think, think, think:

Q: Why shouldn't this be seen as an intelligence failure, that you were unable to predict something happening here?

DR. RICE: Steve, I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking." May 16, 2002